3D subassembly capabilities speed scooter design

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 24, 2002

Nova Cruz Products burned rubber in the personal transportation market with its recently unveiled Voloci, a whisper-quiet electric motorbike designed lightning fast in SolidWorks 3D CAD software.

Nova Cruz Products burned rubber in the personal transportation market with its recently unveiled Voloci, a whisper-quiet electric motorbike designed lightning fast in SolidWorks 3D CAD software.

SolidWorks enabled Nova Cruz to design parts and subassemblies in hours instead of weeks so it could get the super light motorbike to market much faster than if it had used other 3D CAD products.

Getting innovative products to market first is crucial for smaller manufacturing companies like Nova Cruz that are trying to spark a trend.

SolidWorks' quick design time originally helped the company get the Xootr scooter to market quickly and set the standard for nimble electric scooters.

It also helped Nova Cruz's engineers design the Voloci's parts fast enough to have a working prototype in a matter of hours, rather than nearly 12 weeks with other 3D CAD software.

"We had a tight timeframe.

We wanted to set the bar for high-performance electric motorbikes that have a long range, are light, and can hit 30mph, so we needed to get it to market fast", said Nathan Ulrich, Nova Cruz's chief technical officer and co-founder.

"SolidWorks' Windows environment and powerful sub-assembly capabilities were integral to helping us quickly develop prototypes that we could test and tweak.

That functionality coupled with the ability to transfer SolidWorks designs into a program that automatically machines the parts helped us produce a finished product in a shorter time than if we'd used other CAD packages".

NH-based Nova Cruz first made a splash in January 2000 when it launched the award-winning line of Xootr kickscooters.

The company again turned to SolidWorks when it set out to apply the same concept to a motorised bike and change how the public and the industry view electric vehicles.

Rather than the clunky, heavy electric bikes on the market that can only go 18mph, the Voloci (unveiled in January of this year) weighs less than 80 pounds, is easy to carry, and reaches top speeds of 30mph.

Urban professionals looking for an affordable, convenient means of transportation, kids travelling in suburban neighbourhoods, and even police officers and park personnel represent some of the Voloci's target audience.

Nova Cruz took advantage of the extensive SolidWorks Solution Partner Programme (the largest in the industry with more than 400 products) to streamline production.

It uses Gibbs and Associates' GibbsCAM, a computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) partner product for machining parts based on SolidWorks designs.

The two technologies help companies accelerate both design and manufacturing.

Nova Cruz also used Structural Research and Analysis Corporation's COSMOS/Works to perform structural analysis on various parts of the bike.

"Voloci is the next Nova Cruz product to provide a fun, efficient, and environmentally friendly way to commute and play", said Dave Corcoran, executive vice president of research and development at SolidWorks.

"To set that standard, the company had to be first to market with its design innovations.

SolidWorks and its partner products gave Nova Cruz's engineers the platform it needed to quickly build the bike's parts and subassemblies, test them, and assemble the entire finished product in record time so they could get the bike into consumers' hands before anyone else.

SolidWorks has set the standard for providing engineers the design functionality they need in tight timeframes".